Home buyers' amount and home renovation credits

Three federal tax credits help with buying or adapting a home: the home buyers’ amount for your first home, the home accessibility tax credit for renovations that make a home safer or easier to use for a senior or a person with a disability, and the multigenerational home renovation tax credit for building a self-contained unit so a senior or an adult with a disability can live with family. To save for a first home, see the FHSA and the Home Buyers’ Plan.

The home buyers’ amount

This is a non-refundable credit: it lowers your federal tax, but you get nothing back from it if you owe no tax. You can claim up to $10,000 for a qualifying home bought in 2025. Like most federal non-refundable credits, the amount you claim is multiplied by the lowest federal tax rate, 14.5% for 2025.

You can generally claim it if all of these apply:

• You or your spouse or common-law partner acquired a qualifying home. It must be in Canada and registered in your or your partner’s name. Houses, townhouses, mobile homes, condo units and apartments in a duplex, triplex, fourplex or apartment building count, as do some co-op shares that give you ownership of a unit. It can be an existing home or one under construction.
• You’re a first-time buyer. You didn’t live in another home, in Canada or abroad, that you or your partner owned, in the year you bought or any of the four years before.
• You’ll live there. You must intend that you (or a related person with a disability, if you bought it for them) will live in it as a principal place of residence no later than a year after you buy it.

You don’t have to be a first-time buyer if you’re eligible for the disability tax credit, or you bought the home for a related person who is, so that person can live in a home that’s more accessible or better suited to their needs.

Eligible partners or co-buyers of the same home can split the amount, as long as the total isn’t more than the maximum. If only one partner qualifies, only that partner can claim it, and they can claim the full amount.

The home accessibility tax credit

This non-refundable credit is for renovations to a home for a qualifying individual: someone who is 65 or older at the end of the year, or eligible for the disability tax credit at any time in the year. They can claim it themselves, or it can be claimed by their spouse or common-law partner or by certain relatives who claim (or could claim) a dependant, caregiver or disability amount for them.

The renovation must be lasting and become part of the home, and it must either help the person get into the home or be mobile and functional in it, or lower their risk of harm in the home or getting into it. The home must be in Canada, and either owned and lived in by the qualifying individual, or owned by the spouse or relative claiming for them and lived in by both of them.

What you can claim:

• paid work by professionals such as electricians, plumbers, carpenters or architects
• if you do the work yourself, building materials, fixtures, equipment rentals, building plans and permits, but not the value of your own labour or tools
• work by a relative only if they’re registered for the GST/HST.

What you can’t: routine repairs and maintenance, household appliances, home entertainment electronics, housekeeping, security monitoring, gardening or outdoor maintenance, financing costs, and renovations done mainly to add to or keep up the home’s value.

You can claim up to $20,000 of eligible expenses a year for a qualifying individual. If a home has more than one qualifying individual, the $20,000 limit is for the home. The claim can be shared among the people entitled to it. If an expense also qualifies as a medical expense, you can claim it for both credits. Government grants and other government assistance don’t reduce this credit.

Work out the claim with the chart on the Federal Worksheet. Keep invoices and receipts showing the vendor or contractor (with their GST/HST number, if any), what was bought or done and when, the amount, and proof of payment.

The multigenerational home renovation tax credit

This credit is refundable, so you can get money back even if you owe no tax. It’s for creating a secondary unit: a self-contained unit with its own private entrance, kitchen, bathroom and sleeping area, newly built or made from space that didn’t already qualify as one, and meeting local permits, codes and by-laws. It can be a separate building on the same property.

The unit must let a qualifying individual live with a relative. A qualifying individual is 65 or older at the end of the year, or 18 to 64 and eligible for the disability tax credit. The relative must be 18 or older and a parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece or nephew of the qualifying individual or their spouse or partner. Only one renovation can ever be claimed for each qualifying individual.

The person claiming must have been a resident of Canada all year and paid the costs, and must either live in the home (or plan to within 12 months after the work ends) as the qualifying individual, their spouse or partner, or the relative, or own the home and be the relative.

For 2025, the credit is 14.5% of qualifying costs, up to $50,000 of costs for each qualifying renovation. If eligible family members share the costs, each can claim what they paid, up to $50,000 combined. Claim it for the year the renovation was finished (for example, when it passed final inspection), even if it started earlier, using Schedule 12.

Routine repairs, appliances, home entertainment electronics, housekeeping and similar services, financing costs and work by a relative who isn’t registered for the GST/HST don’t qualify, and neither do costs that were reimbursed (including by GST/HST rebates) or that you have no receipts for. You can’t claim the same expense for this credit and for the medical expense or home accessibility credit.

GST/HST on a new home

If you buy a newly built or substantially renovated home from a builder, or build or substantially renovate your own, as your or a relative’s primary place of residence, you may be able to recover part of the GST or the federal part of the HST with the GST/HST new housing rebate, which you apply for separately. First-time buyers may also qualify for the first-time home buyers’ GST/HST rebate.

What to do

• Buying your first home: claim the home buyers’ amount for the year you buy, and agree with any co-buyers how to split it.
• Renovating for a senior or a person with a disability: decide which credit fits the work, and who will claim.
• Keep every contract, invoice and proof of payment. Don’t send them with your return, but the CRA may ask to see them.